Category: Uncategorized

What I'm Sayin'

Judge Rules In Favor Of Letting Autistic Boy Take Service Dog To School
(Los Angeles Times)
June 15, 2011
SANTA ANA, CALIFORNIA– [Excerpt] By the time summer school starts in early July, Caleb will probably walk into class with a golden retriever at his side.
Caleb Ciriacks is a 7-year-old severely autistic boy who for the most part doesn’t speak. He shrieks and paces when he gets anxious, and on occasion he pinches and scratches others. Eddy is Caleb’s service dog, tethered to the boy by a red strap. The dog keeps Caleb from running off into crowds or darting into traffic, and he knows to intervene when the boy starts to feel anxious.
When Caleb entered first grade last year, school officials in Cypress refused to let him take Eddy to school. Caleb’s parents sued in federal court, alleging that the district was discriminating against their son based on his disability.
On Tuesday, a federal judge in Santa Ana ruled that Frank Vessels Elementary School must let Caleb take Eddy to school and that the boy was probably a victim of discrimination. U.S. Department of Justice attorneys filed a “statement of interest” in the case, saying the school district was violating the boy’s civil rights and misinterpreting the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Entire article:
Judge rules in favor of letting autistic boy take service dog to school
http://www.InclusionDaily.com/news/2011/red/0615a.htm

In a Pacific State of Mind

Twice a year I teach in the MFA “low residency” program at Pacific University:
I am now at the campus which is just outside Portland, OR in Forest Grove. Just FYI my name in Finnish means Forest Grove. So I feel well situated.
I love teaching in this program because it has a fabulous student body–most of the graduate students are making their way to literary writing after having had a career or a grownup life, a matter of seasoning that not only makes them more vital and sincere as human beings but it also gives them stuff to write about–things drawn from what Yeats called “the foul rag and bone shop of the heart”.
The faculty in this program is in my view the finest group of teaching writers that I know of. It’s a hoot to be among them, and I always learn something each time I come.
Guide dog Nira simply loves the squirrels because unlike their Iowa brethren, the locals are a bit slow and complacent. Who can say why this should be so, save that Oregon is a lusher and greener place than Iowa where the squirrels are at it tooth and claw.
A long day of travel. A week of poetry and nonfiction. And a restaurant just around the corner called “Maggie’s Buns”.
What else can one possibly need?
SK

Say Farewell to Very Special Arts

It goes without saying that there are real consequences when the Democrats stay home and do not vote. The GOP has successfully eliminated VSA, the program that supports arts for people with disabilities, a program that I have been working with to develop creative writing experiences for young people with disabilities. Here is the note I received today from my friend Melissa del Rios announcing the end of VSA as we know it. I am deeply saddened by these developments and I merely with to point out that if you are a writer or academic who imagines that these cuts are not harbingers of what’s to come, you really need to have your head examined. Here is Melissa’s announcement:
Dear Colleagues,
The federal funding provided in previous years by the U.S. Department of Education to the Kennedy Center and VSA is being severely reduced in the coming months. With the loss of at least $9 million in federal funds, the Kennedy Center and VSA has realigned programs and staffing. For VSA, this means a drastic reduction in programs, in grants, and in staff. Nearly three-fourths of the national office staff of VSA have been let go.
I will let you know the status of VSA programs you have been involved with as things progress.
It has been a pleasure working with all of you, and I hope that our paths cross in the near future.
Sincerely,
Melissa Del Rios
Program Development Manager

U.S. House Prepares to Eliminate Arts Education

Sent from my iPad 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Americans for the Arts <advocacy@artsusa.org>
Date: June 14, 2011 5:05:14 PM CDT
To: Stephen Kuusisto <stephen-kuusisto@uiowa.edu>
Subject: U.S. House Prepares to Eliminate Arts Education
Reply-To: Americans for the Arts <advocacy@artsusa.org>

June 14, 2011

Dear Stephen:

Last month, a piece of federal legislation named “Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act” (HR 1891) was introduced for the purpose of terminating 43 existing federal education
programs, including Arts in Education. The Arts in Education program currently funds 57 active education projects around the country, and to date has supported more than 210 competitive grants serving students in high-need schools, as well as the affiliates
of the Kennedy Center and VSA arts education programs.
 
The Arts in Education program also provides critical federal leadership in supporting a well-rounded curriculum throughout our nation’s public schools.
 
On May 25, the House Education & Workforce Committee approved HR 1891 by a party-line vote of 23 Republicans to 16 Democrats. Americans for the Arts worked with Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and
other members of that committee who offered an amendment that sought to restore some of these education programs, including arts education, but that amendment failed to pass.
 
The full House of Representatives may vote on HR 1891 prior to their August Congressional Recess. The Senate education committee, however, is not expected to consider HR 1891 as Chairman
Tom Harkin (D-IA) plans on offering a separate, more comprehensive bill to reauthorize the Elementary & Secondary Education Act.

We call on arts advocates to contact their House Representative through our
customizable e-alert and request that they
oppose HR 1891 because it seeks to terminate the critical federal support directed to arts education. Don’t let this bill narrow the curriculum of our students.

Help us continue this important work by becoming an official member of the Arts Action Fund. If you are not already a member
play your part by joining the Arts Action Fund today — it's free and simple.

Click to remove your name from receiving e-mails regarding arts advocacy

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Sitting in the Coffee Joint, Iowa City

Sleepy college town. Summer. A few grad students coming in, looking frazzled–trying to finish those dissertations by August. Mostly the place is quiet. Two college aged guys (barristas) talk about Malcolm Gladwell–it makes me happy to see that there are still conversations about ideas among young men. This supports my thesis, long held, that boys will talk seriously only when they think no one will actually hear them.
I was also happy to notice that they weren’t using the word “like” –how wondrous!
S.K.

Foreign Policy: If You Can See This, You're Lucky : NPR

Foreign Policy: If You Can See This, You're Lucky : NPR

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/14/137170009/foreign-policy-if-you-can-see-this-youre-lucky?ft=1&f=1001

Foreign Policy: If You Can See This, You're Lucky

June 14, 2011

Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. The vast majority of global health problems do not consist so much of finding a cure as delivering one. Improving health in the world's poorest countries requires solutions that are cheap and simple to administer — and the good news is that these are increasingly available. For example, changing the standard response to diarrhea from saline drips (which require sterile needles and medical staff) to sugar-salt solutions (which require neither) has saved millions of lives that would otherwise have been lost to diseases such as cholera. Next up may be the scourge of poor sight. There are lots of people who can't read signs, watch TV, or recognize a face across the room without corrective vision. I'm one of the lucky few among them who can afford to do something about it; I have four optometrists within blocks of my office and enough money to buy glasses. But around the world, millions of people who should be able to see clearly are almost blind for lack of corrective treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 150 million people worldwide who need glasses do not have them. In sub-Saharan Africa, only about 5 percent of people with poor eyesight have glasses. Skilled eye professionals are also extremely rare; Rwanda, a country of 10 million people — an estimated 1.2 million of whom need eyeglasses — has just 12 optometrists and ophthalmologists. On top of eye conditions that can be fixed with glasses, over 20 million people worldwide can't see because of cataracts. Cataract operations are not complex, but they do require a surgeon and a properly equipped hospital. And costs for even a straightforward cataract surgery in the United States range above $3,000 — or more than 50 times per capita annual health expenditure in Pakistan, for example. This lack of access exacts a heavy toll on the world's poor. A randomized trial in China suggests that giving glasses to children can have an impact on their performance at school equivalent to an extra half-year in class, which should come as no surprise to any kid who has squinted at the blackboard from the back row of the classroom. Children with poor vision in northeast Brazil are 10 percent more likely to drop out of school and nearly 18 percent more likely to repeat a grade. The WHO estimates the global cost of poor eyesight at $269 billion a year in lost productivity. Fortunately, innovation in eye-care delivery is reducing the requirements in terms of both financial resources and technical skills needed to correct vision problems worldwide. For example, the Aravind eye hospital network in Southern India has perfected a high-volume, low-cost technique for curing cataract blindness. The approach uses a locally produced replacement lens costing less than $5, which is inserted through a small incision into the eye. A surgeon alternating between two different operating tables can treat 15 cases an hour for less than $15 total (a cost covered for 70 percent of patients by cross-subsidy from the 30 percent of customers who are wealthy enough to pay for it). Some 200,000 cataract surgeries are performed each year by the Aravind network. Mass-production technologies have slashed the price of glasses as well. China now produces readymade eyeglasses for as little as $2 a pair and made-to-order pairs for $5 to $10 retail. In India, the multinational firm Essilor has funded vans that tour towns and villages offering free eye exams and selling prescription plastic glasses (which cost an average of about $5) and ready-made nonprescription reading glasses (as little as $1), a project that has proved profitable in its pilot stage. To overcome the shortage of skilled professionals, Kovin Naidoo at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa is working with community-based health workers to provide simple eye exams, which, combined with cheaper glasses, could considerably increase access to corrective vision. Naidoo's work might be made more straightforward by a new eye-test system developed by the MIT Media Lab, which replaces the traditional eye exam's complex set of corrective lenses and eye chart with a matchbox-size plastic device attached to a cell phone loaded with some simple software. The test takes less than two minutes and doesn't require a skilled practitioner; the snap-on plastic device costs about $1. Another way of getting around the need for skilled eye-care professionals is "adaptive" eyewear. New lenses filled with silicon oil can be adjusted by the customers themselves to provide corrective vision, and cost about $19 a pair. And a new technology using two lenses which slide across each other to alter focus costs as little as $4, and if production can be scaled up the price could be reduced even further. It is worth noting, however, that the global vision problem is not simply one of cost and a lack of optometrists. In East Timor, for example, a survey found that 55 percent of rural women would be unwilling to pay even $1 for a pair of glasses. The randomized trial of eyeglasses and education in China found that 30 percent of kids who needed glasses and were offered a free pair refused them; the authors suggest that perhaps their parents were operating under the mistaken view that wearing glasses further damages eyesight. But with marketing approaches that increase the demand for glasses, especially among young people, we can ensure that the whole world can finally see clearly.